There is a tremendous amount of dairy manure waste generated by dairy farms each year that must be managed. However, there are limited options for disposing of this material, specifically manure coming from dairy Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO's). Due to the high density of cows in such facilities, an extremely large quantity of manure is produced daily in these facilities, resulting in often strong smells and continual odors that are objectionable to many people living near the facilities. Currently, the waste is usually stored in lagoons due to the relatively high percentage of water in the waste. However, lagoons and other current methods do not eliminate odor problems from dairy farming operations. Additionally, current disposal/storage methods, along with land farming, in many cases, run the risk of contaminating the air, land, and water in and around these CAFO's.
At the same time, in the global economy, increasing quantities of fossil fuels are utilized each year for electricity production, heating, steam generation, transportation and other needs. There are continual efforts by various environmentally-minded groups to encourage the decreased consumption of fossil fuels to preserve the limited quantity of the fuels as well as to decrease the quantity of pollutants produced by burning fossil fuels. While these efforts have had some success, there is always the need for additional processes and products which utilize energy sources other than fossil fuels.
There is a need for products and processes which can utilize dairy wastes for producing energy such as heat and power.